Gibson Too Strong For Marblehead Worlds Fleet

Marblehead World Championship

Ploermel, France

Brad Gibson stormed to the Marblehead World Championship title in Pleormel, France by taking eight race wins in the 20-race series. Sailing his own newly launched Grunge design.

A strong fleet of 67 boats from 10 countries competed in the first Marblehead World Championship held since 2006. The venue showed a variety of conditions starting in good breeze but racing proved difficult towards the end of the event as the race organisers had to deal with very light wind.

A series of 20 races were conducted with Gibson, former One Metre World Champion for Australia who now lives in and competes for Great Britain, hitting the ground running with three consecutive race wins to open up an early lead. Gibson had to be patient for his next race win and it came six races later, and when it rains, it pours as four consecutive bullets gave him a comfortable lead at the midway stage.

Whilst Gibson was runaway leader, a battle for the final podium positions ensued between Christophe Boisnault (FRA) and former World Champions Graham Bantock (GBR) sailing a Prime Numbers and Martin Roberts (GBR) sailing a Starkers 2.

The Brits had solid starts whilst the Frenchman struggled early on to recover from a poor seeding race finishing 24th in Race 2 and unable to finish Race 3. Boisnault slowly reeled in the Brits with consistent results but a DNF in the penultimate race saw him finish off the podium.

Bantock came through to take silver whilst Roberts settled for bronze, five points off his compatriot.